Occasionally our staff covers national conferences where translators are provided to give the proceedings in English and French.
The translators sit in a small tent at the back of the room, listen intently to headphones, then reiterate the words spoken at the podium/head table/microphone on the floor.
Conference participants – and journalists – listen to their preferred language on their own headphones.
Canada has had its two official languages since September 1969, when the Trudeau government’s Official Languages Act came into effect.
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Within the next year or two, the United States is expected to pass a bill making English its official language, although Congress has debated the issue since the early 1980s.
Canada’s language act also did not come without controversy.
The act, which guaranteed access in both languages to federal government services, reached a crucial second reading in May of 1969.
As the Britannica Book of the Year noted, at that point “almost a quarter of the Conservative members of the House of Commons broke with their leader, Robert Stanfield, to vote against the bill. Most of the dissidents came from ridings in the Prairie Provinces.”
Letters in the Western Producer’s Open Forum at the time expressed some of the feelings in the countryside.
“Is there no way of stopping this business of trying to shove French down the throats of the people of Canada?” asked one reader from Neepawa, Man. (May 15, 1969).
On the flipside: “Why is it here in Canada, we wish to stick to one language? … It baffles me very much to learn of so many being against our nation’s betterment,” wrote a reader from Irene, Sask. (May 6, 1969)
(more next week)
